Sadly a lot of the KPI driven madness has trickled down into smaller and smaller orgs. I've seen it even in ~200 person engineering orgs these days.
Always because management is some guy that's never been in the hot seat himself and doesn't know how to talk to users/customers. So he needs a pretty dashboard with green lights and KPIs he can shout about.
I worked at a 6 person startup with 2 hour weekly all hands where we went over dashboards, metrics, and KPIs. We had over a million in funding and less than 30 users. It was hilarious. I put in my 2 week notice 6 weeks in.
Always because management is some guy that's never been in the hot seat himself and doesn't know how to talk to users/customers. So he needs a pretty dashboard with green lights and KPIs he can shout about.